Tag: fantasy

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – Tethered (Elayna R. Gallea)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

I wanted to take a break from the thrillers I had been reading and actually found this one instead. Normally, I’m a fantasy or romance reader, and since I had read one of Elayna’s books before, this one caught my eye since it was a romance between a human and a vampire.

I know a lot of people who, when they think of vampire and human romances, immediately think of the Twilight Saga. Which is nothing like that, thank god. Nothing against the Twilight Saga, but when I think of vampires, they don’t sparkle in the sun.

Anyway, another thing to note from this book is that this entire series is also connected to the other series that I started with her, which I found was interesting! That was the Of Earth and Flame; I did do a review on that, which had elves and dragon shifters. I read that one because it was recommended on Pinterest, as it was a close retelling of Barbie as Rapunzel.

I did do a review on that one as well, but I haven’t decided if I was going to continue the series, and when I thought about doing so, I ended up going down a long spiral of different thrillers. Tethered is also another series, and it did end on a cliffhanger, so I’ll let you know at the end of the review if I will take a look at the second one or not.

The book starts out in both Luna’s POV and Sebastian’s POV. Luna talks about how she is arranged to be married to Sebastian to reunite two kingdoms in the current war that has been going on.

Luna isn’t thrilled about this arrangement, as she didn’t want to be married to a vampire, but she only does as she is told because her father told her to do so. She also didn’t want to leave her kingdom, knowing her brother needs a cure, which they go into a little bit of detail about.

Sebastian, on the other hand, is only doing this arrangement for his mother’s sake; although she’s not his biological mother, she sort of adopted him and changed him into a powerful vampire. I’m still confused about that whole can of worms too.

However, they aren’t only getting married; the vampire Queen Marguerite insists on having a Binding Ceremony. This will bind them together, but instead, they end up becoming Tethered, which is even stronger than the Binding. They literally can’t be apart more than 30 feet from each other without being in a lot of pain.

Since being Tethered wasn’t the plan, both Luna and Sebastian start looking into how to become untethered from each other. Over time, they start to realize that they are getting feelings for each other and try to deny them because of the fact that they think it’s the Tethered bond that is causing them to want to be more intimate with each other.

I will say, the author does take her time building up the relationship between the two, but there was a point where I’m like:

Plus, with them struggling to figure out their feelings and chemistry, they also are dealing with other things that are happening in the castle, such as someone trying to murder Luna and instead murdering her handmaid.

I also did have a really hard time relating to the main characters because of her name being Luna; if you haven’t read my reviews on the I Want Your Family series, that explains why I have a hard time rooting for anyone who names their characters Luna.

It was also a hard slow to get into; it took me a little bit just to get into it, which I was kind of bummed out about, but it was also the same for her other book that I read before. Then again, it could just be me in general because I’ve been so sucked into fast thrillers that I expected the pace of all my books to be like that.

Overall, the book did end on a cliffhanger, and honestly, I’m up in the air about whether I want to read the second one, just because the first one was slow and took so long to get into, but it made me want to read this sequel more than the last book of hers I’ve read.

The only thing that would suck is that, for me to read the sequel, I would have to buy it since Tethered was already available on Kindle Unlimited. To me, if I didn’t absolutely love the first book, it makes no sense for me to get the second book unless I needed to know what happened.

Sequels are a hit or miss for me; it really has to make me want to finish the series or saga. I’ll use the Twilight Saga as an example. I liked Twilight; granted, I didn’t like the vampires that sparkle crpa, but I liked it enough to read the second one, New Moon. I really had to power through New Moon just to get to Eclipse.

I even fell asleep at the theater when New Moon came out. The only thing I liked about New Moon was finding out about the werewolves, and Jacob turning into one was pretty cool. In order to get through it, you had to endure Bella’s teenage “my life is over” crap.

As a reader, you’ll find out which books you were able to get right into and others that you had to either push yourself to get through or you weren’t able to finish. That’s okay! I’ve got a couple of books that I had tried and tried to get myself to go through and really couldn’t do.

Anyway, what did you think of Tethered? Are you a sucker when it comes to vampire love stories? Or are you like me and jump around to ones to keep it interesting? Let me know down below!

Posted in Books, Reviews

Book Review – Of Earth and Flame (Elayna R Gallea)

Posted on by Katie Night

Hey Dearies!

So, I kind of went down a rabbit hole and found that there are books that are sort of similar to one of my favorite franchises that my siblings and I used to watch, which happened to be the Barbie movies.

Thanks to Pinterest and some research, I found books inspired by those movies. Of course, I made a list of each of these books and which movie they are inspired by. I also decided to get Kindle Unlimited because it just made sense for me to have that versus buying books that I may or may not like.

I will be making a post with all the books and which movie was inspired by them in the future, but let’s get started with this one!

Now, this book is actually a series, which I didn’t realize until I looked more into it, and it’s fantasy, which has been rare for me lately because I’ve been reading more romance/smut stuff recently.

This book is actually an inspiration for Barbie as Rapunzel!

If you haven’t seen this one, let me give you a brief overview of what the plot is about.

Spoiler Alert: If you haven’t seen the movie!

So, in some of the Barbie movies, there is a conflict before the story is told, which in this case is Kelly talking about how she doesn’t know what to paint and thinks that she won’t do a great job. That’s when Barbie tells the story about a girl who loves to paint, Rapunzel.

Rapunzel is stolen and lives in a manor with Mother Gothel, who has strong magical powers that she uses to keep Rapunzel trapped in the manor. She also treats Rapunzel like crap and uses her as a maid. Then Rapunzel finds a secret staircase that goes down into a basement, where she finds a hairbrush that’s engraved with:

“Constant as the stars above, always know that you are loved. To our daughter Rapunzel on her first birthday. With love forever, mother and father.”

Which confuses her since she’s only known Gothel as her mother figure. Then her friend dragon breaks a hole in the floor, and they find an underground tunnel that leads directly to the village. She saves one of the princesses, and the prince thanks her.

She goes back to the manor, and overnight, the hairbrush turns into a magical paintbrush where she can paint anything and magically appear. She does this with dresses, and she is able to paint a portrait of the village where she can walk into it and be in the village.

Since the prince invited her to the ball, Mother Gothel finds out and ends up locking her away in the tower, and goes as Rapunzel to the ball to trick the prince. Rapunzel escapes and then confronts Mother Gothel and finds out that she stole her as a baby to get back at her father.

That’s just a brief overview of the movie, but I highly recommend checking it out because, honestly, it was a different twist on the Rapunzel story. This wasn’t my all-time favorite Barbie movie, but it’s up there as one that I would rewatch over and over again.

Anyway, back to the book, it starts out as any other Rapunzel story does, locked in a tower. When the book first starts, Aileana is literally escaping the tower as she has been locked in there for 23 years and is arranged to marry the prince of an evil king, who is even more evil.

Aileana is also an elf, which I was really excited about because I’ve never read a book where the main character is an elf. So, once she escapes, she meets this guy Xander, whom she happens to stab when they first meet, since she doesn’t want to be captured like she was before.

They team up, since the land they are in, females can only be accompanied by a male figure, and in order for them to lead the country, they pretend to be a fake husband and wife. They also find out they are soulmates too.

The more time they spend together, the more they start to fall for each other, which I love! I honestly think more authors should do this, like just because their soulmates build up the chemistry!

Plus, their pretending to be husband and wife makes the connection, I think, stronger in a sense. Not to mention the interesting thing, you find out what Xander really is because he heals quickly. I honestly thought he was going to come out as a werewolf, but boy, was I wrong!

There was also a lot of other stuff that happened in the book, but I really didn’t want to spoil too much. The way the book ended, it really makes me want to read the second one, which is also on Kindle Unlimited!

Overall, between the book and the movie, they only have a few things in common: the Rapunzel factor of being locked in a tower, magic, dragons, and, of course, it takes place in a kingdom. It’s a different spin on Rapunzel, but I really like it!

I also wanted a break from the smut I’ve been reading. I just finished a quick series that I’m going to do a review on, but this was a breath of fresh air for me. I’m also a big fantasy fan, so it’s been nice to read something different for a change.

I’m also really excited to read the next book from the list! Let me know how you liked this book and if you were big fans of the Barbie movies when you were a kid.